Please note that genetic age is different from calendar age. We cannot (yet) estimate calendar age—how long since your dog was born—from DNA. To learn how vets estimate calendar age you can read How old is your dog? How veterinarians estimate dog age.
The genetic age that we report is an estimation of where your dog is in his or her healthspan. Dogs age at very different rates due to a number of genetic and environmental factors. Body size is a strong genetic influence: for example, a seven year old Great Dane is at the start of his golden years, but a seven year old Pomeranian is just learning what "slow down" means. Just within this example, you can see that the old "one doggie year = seven human years" adage isn’t going to work. And yet, knowing your dog’s age is important: it informs what your dog needs as far as food, frequency of veterinary checkups, and exercise. So how do you best determine how old your dog is?
Embark's genetic age feature calculates how old your dog would be if he or she were aging at an average human rate (using humans in the USA as the baseline). So going back to our Dane/Pom example, we'd estimate a seven year old Great Dane at about 80 years old (senior citizen), but a seven year old Pom would be about 42 (adult). Makes way more sense, right?
| Calendar age | Genetic age |
|---|---|
| 1 year | 17 human years |
| 2 years | 25 human years |
| 3 years | 31 human years |
| 4 years | 38 human years |
| 5 years | 44 human years |
| 6 years | 51 human years |
| 7 years | 58 human years |
| 8 years | 64 human years |
| 9 years | 71 human years |
| 10 years | 78 human years |
All we need from you is a calendar age. It's okay if this is an estimation: it is just a starting point. We then factor in your dog's breed composition, information at certain genes that affect size, and their inbreeding coefficient to calculate genetic age. Like in humans, in dogs females tend to live longer than males (so an “80 year old” female dog = 80 year old woman). Exercise and diet also play a role in how long your dog will live. Nevertheless, genetic age is the primary risk factor for numerous diseases in dogs, including cancer, kidney disease, osteoarthritis, cataracts, cardiac disease and cognitive decline. It can help you and your vet know what you should feed your dog, what screenings to get, and other aspects of your dog’s care.
Your dog’s Wolfiness Score is based on hundreds of markers across the genome where dogs (or almost all of them) are the same, but wolves tend to be different. These markers are thought to be related to "domestication gene sweeps" where early dogs were selected for some trait. Scientists have known about “domestication gene sweeps” for years, but do not yet know why each sweep occurred. By finding rare dogs carrying a wolf gene at a certain marker, we can make associations with behavior, size, metabolism, and development that likely caused these unique signatures of “doggyness” in the genome.
Most dogs have wolfiness scores of 1% or less, although we occasionally find populations and breeds with higher scores and even some especially unique individuals with scores of 5% or more.
Your dog’s Wolfiness Score is not a measure of recent dog-wolf hybridization (the breed mix analysis report would tell you if your dog has any recent wolf ancestry). Instead, the wolfiness score is based on the number of wolf genetic markers your dog has in our unique wolfiness marker panel. While these wolf genes (or, more scientifically speaking, alleles) could be in your dog because it is a wolfdog hybrid, wolfiness scores below 10 are almost always due to ancient wolf genes that have survived many generations to be carried in your dog. These may date back to the original domestication event 15,000 years ago or to more recent dog-wolf matings only a few thousand years ago, but either way they are bits of a wild past that survive in your dog!
For people with puppies, you probably want to know how big of a crate to buy or just how big to expect your dog to become. But genetic weight is also useful for people with fully grown dogs. Just like with people, overweight and obese dogs suffer reduced length and quality of life. They can develop chronic health conditions and suffer from limited mobility and other issues. While over half of American dogs are overweight or obese, fewer than 15% of their owners realize it. By comparing your dog’s weight to their genetic predicted weight you have one more piece of information about their ideal weight. With this and other pieces of information like weight history and body condition, you and your veterinarian may want to discuss your dog’s diet, exercise, and weight control plan to give your pup the longest, healthiest life possible.
Our test is the only dog DNA test that provides true genetic size not based just on breed ancestry but based on over a dozen genes known to influence a dog’s weight. It uses the most advanced science to determine your dog’s expected weight based on their sex, the combination of these genes, and breed-specific modifiers.
Unlike in people, healthy weight in dogs is controlled largely by only a few genes. Our algorithm explains over 85% of the variance in healthy adult weight. However, due to a few as-yet-undiscovered genes and genetic interactions that affect size, this algorithm sometimes misses. Occasionally it misses by a fairly large amount especially when a dog has a breed with an unknown size-influencing gene. If we have missed your dog’s weight, your dog may be a scientific discovery waiting to happen! Please be sure to go to the Research tab and complete the Nutrition & Exercise assessment, where you can answer the question "Has your dog been weighed in the past 3 months, and if so how much does he or she weigh" by telling us your dog’s actual weight. This information will inform our ongoing research into weight, nutrition and exercise in dogs.
Dogs have 39 pairs of chromosomes, almost double humans who have 23. 38 of those pairs are the same for all dogs while the 39th is the sex chromosomes - two X’s for females and one X and one Y for males. One copy of each chromosome came from your dog’s mother and one from your dog’s father. Each copy contains between 24 million and 123 million bases, or letters of DNA code, for 2.5 billion total letters inherited from each parent. This chromosome illustration shows a representation of each of your dog’s 38 pairs of chromosomes (excluding the X and Y sex chromosomes).
Because the members of a breed have similar stretches of DNA, we can use our 200,000+ genetic markers to determine what part of each chromosome in your dog came from what breed. For each pair of chromosomes, your dog’s mom and dad each gave your dog one copy of that chromosome, for a grand total of 78 chromosomes. So if your dog’s mom was a poodle and dad was a schnauzer then the painting would show one complete poodle and one complete schnauzer chromosome for each pair. The more complex your dog’s ancestry, the more complex the painting, as in each generation recombination (the splitting apart and "shuffling around" of genes between paired chromosomes) mixes up bits of chromosome from grandparents, great-grandparents, and beyond.
Each trait your dog exhibits, such as fur shedding, is based on the letter at one or more locations in your dog’s genome. For example the location determining if your dog sheds their fur is located on chromosome 1. Some other traits, like size, are complexly inherited from many locations, including ones on chromosomes 1, 3, 4, 7, 10, 15, and more. Your dog looks the way it does not because of averaging or blending the breeds that form it, but because specific traits were inherited from specific breeds. That’s one reason your mix may look, act, and have certain health issues much more like one breed than another!
Haplotypes are particular DNA sequences that are inherited entirely from a dog’s mom (maternal) or dad (paternal).
Because they are inherited whole, your dog and his or her mom share the exact same maternal haplotype. If you have a male dog, your dog and his dad share the exact same paternal haplotype (female dogs don’t inherit paternal haplotypes).
Because most breeds were started with only a few individual dogs, many breeds are dominated by only one or a few haplotypes.
Haplogroups are groups of similar DNA sequences (called haplotypes) that are inherited entirely from the mother (maternal) or father (paternal) and don’t get shuffled up like other parts of your dog’s genome.
These groups all originally descend from one male or female wolf, usually one that lived tens of thousands of years ago. Because they are inherited whole and not shuffled like other DNA, they can be used to trace the ancestral routes that dogs took around the globe en route to your home.
Only male dogs have paternal haplogroups because they are determined by the Y chromosome, which only male dogs have. Both males and females have maternal haplogroups, which come from a part of DNA called the mitochondrial DNA.
All dogs are related and share some DNA. Siblings share lots of their DNA (half of it in fact), cousins share a bit less (an eighth), and so on. Because dog breeds are made up of a closed group of dogs, all dogs in that breed share a lot of their DNA, typically about as much as second cousins, though it varies by breed. Different breeds that are closely related share somewhat less DNA, and dogs from very different breeds share even less DNA (but still much more DNA than either dog shares with a cat).
DNA is inherited in pieces, called chromosomes, that are passed along from parent to offspring. Each generation, these chromosomes are broken up and shuffled a bit in a process known as recombination. So, the length of the segments your dog shares with her ancestors decreases with each generation above her: she shares longer segments with her mom than her grandma, longer segments with her grandma than her great-grandma, and so on.
We can use the length of segments Mariana shares with our reference dogs to see how many generations it has been since they last shared an ancestor. Long segments of DNA that are identical to known breed dogs tell Embark's scientists that Mariana has, without a doubt, a relative from that breed. By testing over 200,000 genetic markers, we build up her genes one DNA segment at a time, to learn the ancestry with great certainty. Other dog DNA tests look at fewer than 10,000 genetic markers and have to take a guess at breed ancestry based on that.
After Embark’s proprietary algorithms determine Mariana's breed ancestry, our scientists look over her results individually, by hand, to make sure they are correct. This is why Embark’s results are the most accurate on the market.
Look closely and you'll probably find Mariana has some physical and/or behavioral resemblance with her ancestor's breeds. The exact similarity depends on which parts of DNA Mariana shares with each breed. Some traits associated with each breed are listed in the Breed Ancestry section of our website. Embark will tell you even more about Mariana's traits soon!
P.S. In a small proportion of cases, we find dogs that don’t share segments with other dogs we have tested, indicating the presence of a rare breed that is not part of our reference panel or possibly a true "village dog" without any purebred relatives at all. In these rare cases we contact the owner to find out more and let them know about their unique dog before they get their results. With this in-depth detective work, we are pushing science forward by identifying genetically unique groups of dogs.
Let us know with our contact form or by email at howdy@embarkvet.com.
Yes! Some dogs descend from other dogs that were themselves mixed breed. These other dogs can give small contributions to the ancestry of your dog, so small that they are no longer recognizable as any one particular breed. We call this portion “Supermutt” since it confers super powers! Just kidding. But we do think supermutts really are super!
Why doesn't Mariana have an exact genotype at this locus? This locus includes several alleles, and Embark can currently differentiate some, but not all, of the possible alleles at this location.
For example, if at the E Locus a dog is EgEg or EmEm or EgEm then you will see that result, but if it is Ege, then the result you see will see is "EgE or Ege" because we cannot yet distinguish between e and E alleles.
The BETA label indicates that this is a new feature. New features are more likely to receive tweaks or changes, and you have a slightly higher chance of encountering issues.
If you have any feedback—good or bad—about this feature please email us at howdy@embarkvet.com
We hope you enjoy this new feature!
See what’s hidden in the pages of Mariana’s DNA story. You can learn about the breeds that make Mariana who she is, her genetic family tree, and even go back in time to see where her ancestors came from.
“She's a white Husky”
| Wolfiness: |
2.0 %
HIGH
|
| Predicted Adult Weight: |
57 lbs
|
| Genetic Age: |
15 human years
|
Let us know and we will contact Mariana’s owner and make sure she is reunited with her family soon! Thank you for helping out our furry friends.
Now that you have explored what’s behind Mariana find out what your dog’s DNA has to tell you. Embark tells you more about your dog than you ever thought possible. Are you ready? Let’s go!
Our algorithms predict this is the most likely family tree to explain Mariana’s breed mix, but this family tree may not be the only possible one.
Now that you have explored what’s behind Mariana find out what your dog’s DNA has to tell you. Embark tells you more about your dog than you ever thought possible. Are you ready? Let’s go!
Some images and text courtesy of the AKC, used with permission.
Now that you have explored what’s behind Mariana find out what your dog’s DNA has to tell you. Embark tells you more about your dog than you ever thought possible. Are you ready? Let’s go!
Through Mariana’s mitochondrial DNA we can trace her mother’s ancestry back to where dogs and people first became friends. This map helps you visualize the routes that her ancestors took to your home. Their story is described below the map.
A2 is a very ancient maternal line. Most likely it was one of the major female lines that contributed to the very first domesticated dogs in Central Asia about 15,000 years ago. Some of the line stayed in Central Asia to the present day, and frequently appear as Tibetan Mastiffs and Akitas. Those that escaped the mountains of Central Asia sought out other cold spots, and are now found among Alaskan Malamutes and Siberian Huskies. This lineage is also occasionally found in several common Western breeds, such as German Shepherds and Labrador Retrievers. Curiously, all New Guinea Singing Dogs descend from this line. These are an ancient and very interesting breed found in the mountains of Papua New Guinea. Unfortunately, they are now endangered. They are closely related to the Australian dingo, so you could say its cousins are dingos! This line is also common in village dogs in Southeast and East Asia. Unlike many other lineages, A2 did not spread across the whole world, probably because it did not have the opportunity to hitch its wagon to European colonialism - or because these dogs just prefer hanging out in mountains, tundras, islands, and other hard-to-reach places!
Part of the A2 haplogroup, this haplotype occurs most commonly in Siberian Huskies, Alaskan Malamutes, Labrador Retrievers, and village dogs from Alaska.
Some other Embark dogs with this haplotype:
Now that you have explored what’s behind Mariana find out what your dog’s DNA has to tell you. Embark tells you more about your dog than you ever thought possible. Are you ready? Let’s go!
This 'Paternal Haplotype' tab is for deep ancestral lineage going back thousands of years.
For recent ancestry—"What breeds did my dog inherit from her mom and dad?"—please refer to the Breed or Summary tab and the Family Tree tab.
The Paternal Haplotype refers to a dog’s deep ancestral lineage stretching back thousands of years, before there were any distinct breeds of dog. We determine the Paternal Haplotype by looking at a dog’s Y-chromsome—but not all dogs have Y-chromosomes!
Why can’t we show Paternal Haplotype results for female dogs?
All dogs have two sex chromosomes. Female dogs have two X-chromosomes (XX) and male dogs have one X-chromosome and one Y-chromosome (XY). When having offspring, female (XX) dogs always pass an X-chromosome to their puppy. Male (XY) dogs can pass either an X or a Y-chromosome—if the puppy receives an X-chromosome from its father then it will be a female (XX) puppy and if it receives a Y-chromosome then it will be a male (XY) puppy.
As you can see, Y-chromosomes are passed down from a male dog only to its male offspring.
Since Mariana is a female (XX) dog, she has no Y-chromosome for us to analyze and determine a paternal haplotype.
Now that you have explored what’s behind Mariana find out what your dog’s DNA has to tell you. Embark tells you more about your dog than you ever thought possible. Are you ready? Let’s go!
Learn more about Embark >
